Gaia is most likely doing the sparkles to help drive cash sales. The whole 'help you avoid scams in trades' is likely a misdirect. Gaia has a history of apparently doing things for one motive and stating other reasons. Many aquarium issues come to mind. Any person doing trades for large items should be taking the time to hover over the item and read the item name anyway. Either way I find the sparkles quite annoying.
Instead of adding 'shiny sparkles' Gaia could be doing a lot of practical things to make the trade window better.
1. List text names along with pictures of items in trades.
2. Include the same catagories as inventory (e.g. have a tab for aquarium items)
3. Make the gold windows a larger font so it is easier to avoid a typo.
4. Based on gold and either AMP or LMP of items in the trade show a total 'worth' of both sides of the trade.
5. Don't show soulbound items in the item selection window or clearly define them. (e.g. currently if you are trading fish you can not see which fish are in your tank and which ones are available to trade. You only know when you get an error message when you try to send the trade.)
Sparkles and Hover:
Firefox users - you can add a filter to adblock that removes the sparkles entirely. You get rid of an eyesore and hover text then works correctly as well.
I found this in another thread - worked well for me.
Fossil Tape
Just adblock
|http://s.cdn.gaiaonline.com/images/premiumitems/premium_sparkle_*
and it gets rid of all the sparkles.
